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A pillow? Possibly a medical sample? Or a conceptual gimmick? Suggesting the impermanence of perishable goods, once you remove this sequel to 1998's
Cream from its plastic inflatable packaging and expose it to the air, a zeitgeist stopwatch starts to tick away. Bearing the dimensions and solidity of one of Carl Andre's infamous bricks, it showcases an orgy of emerging contemporary artists in the same way that
10 x 10 surveyed cutting-edge architecture. An introductory essay sees the 10 curators, under the stewardship of the Head of Exhibitions and Display at the Tate Modern, Iwona Blazwick, discuss via the Internet the criteria behind their selections. There is much talk of the YBAs (Young British Artists) and the London scene, but there are few British artists featured, though the satirical whimsy of David Shrigley (
The Beast Is Near) merits strategic inclusion. Following 10 pieces of post-1990 writing selected by each curator, ranging from philosophical extracts to poetry, fiction and Cuban rock lyrics, comes the "exhibition-in-a-book", arranged in alphabetical order. While few of the "fresh cream" included here can be said to have yet risen to the top internationally (apart from the 2000 Turner Prize-winning photographer Wolfgang Tillmans), the breadth of vision encompassed is predictably vast: South America, the Far East and the former Eastern Europe feature heavily, with media including photography, video, sculpture, paper cut-outs, food, pipe-cleaners and even painting--occasionally. Although formidably disparate at first, glimpses of themes develop. Performance, masks, the timelessness of human physical form, site-specific creation and cultural consciousness recurrently surface, in art as diverse as Mexican "Acne Art", Jane Alexander's humanimals, Janet Cardiff's sculpted "walks" and Orla Barry's studies of seaside boulders. Inevitably a few may recede like so much froth, but the curatorship proves consistently thoughtful, personal and engaging, and should be applauded (along with publisher Phaidon) for facilitating a crucial platform from which to view these thriving worlds that lie outside the artistic mainstream. --
David Vincent
Amazon.com
From its plastic pillow packaging to its passages of almost unreadable peach-colored type on white paper, this tall, skinny book is no stranger to the high-concept bias of contemporary art in the '90s.
Fresh Cream demonstrates the continuing bull market for extreme depictions of the body, retreads of once subversive strategies, and work heavily informed by advertising imagery.
The 100 artists in this second installment of a biennial publication (Cream was the first) were chosen by 10 curators from cities as far-flung as Moscow, London, Bangkok, and New York. Asked to select individuals "who have emerged internationally since about the mid-1990s or have yet to emerge at all," the curators chose such widely known video and installation artists as Doug Aitken, Vanessa Beecroft, Jason Rhoades, and Paul McCarthy, as well as those whose identifies would stump the most dedicated art-journal reader.
With so many video, performance, and installation works that beg to be seen in real time and space, this book is a poor substitute for an exhibition. Based on the evidence at hand--a dozen or fewer photographs representing each artist's output and brief descriptions by the curators--the cream only rarely rises to the top.
For this reader, the exceptions include Uta Barth's blurry photographic glimpses of what we see when we're focusing on something else; Doris Salcedo's eloquent furniture memorials to the sufferings of her fellow Colombians; Janet Cardiff's unsettling sound pieces; Annika Eriksson's quietly subversive community-participation events; Heri Dono's politically charged versions of traditional Japanese art forms; and witty paintings by Joanne Greenbaum, Laura Owens, and Elizabeth Peyton. --Cathy Curtis
